


Hassle in the Assessment

by TheRightPurpleElves



Category: Scooby Doo - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 19:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10860750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRightPurpleElves/pseuds/TheRightPurpleElves
Summary: The gang have a plan for everything. Even a monster attacking in the middle of a final.





	Hassle in the Assessment

**Author's Note:**

> It's nice to be back writing for SD. It's less nice to be googling maths again. I just ask you forgive me for any hideous mistakes, my GCSE Maths exam was six years ago and contrary to popular belief, I haven't used a bit of it since.

Shaggy’s in deep crap. He’s been held hostage by ghost pirates, chased by a man with an iron mask for a face, shipwrecked in the Bermuda Triangle and subjected to Daphne’s cooking, but never has he been in such deep crap than he is now, in today’s math final.

He’s never been great shakes at school, hobbled through mostly with help from his friends; Velma had tried her best to interest him with science by blowing things up, Fred had resorted to thespian antics to attempt Shaggy’s English education (and the results were still on Velma’s hard drive for rainy days when they all needed a laugh) and he and Daphne had spent the entire week before the exam immersing themselves in Spanish, only for Fred to pip them by three marks and never let them forget it. Shaggy took pride in the fact that he had taught them history.

They’d all failed food tech together, because Mr Carraway didn’t think key lime pie went with olive and spinach focaccia and pulled BBQ pork meatloaf. Shaggy had had some choice words for that, but they’d been forgiven for saving the school from the Ghost of William Shakespeare (also known as Gary Tweedie, who had recently been told he would have to repeat ninth grade and was now busy repeating ninth grade in prison).

But it would appear that that selfless act of cowardice (and Fred’s Bunsen burner trap) has been forgotten, because here Shaggy is, in front of a page full of math that means the square root of zilch to him. And that isn’t even a helpful analogy, because he’s blanked on what a square root is. Something to do with Pythagoras?

There was a formula, wasn’t there? But the only thing that will come into his head is e = mc squared, and he’s not even sure if Einstein comes into this test at all- it was Einstein, right? Or man, is he getting his scientists mixed up again? Wait, scientists? Isn’t this, like, a math test…?

He looks further, feels the sweat begin to soak into his collar. It’s not only square roots. The numbers are dancing on the page in front of his eyes. Multiply, divide, subtract, square, cube, he tries to take a breath in and chokes on the air in his dry mouth. Oh no. No no no no. He can’t do it. It’s, like… no, it’s impossible, it’s more than impossible, the text is taunting him, Shaggy fails again. Shaggy the useless goof who will never amount to anything, no, he can’t remember a single thing, why is Velma not here to help him, why will he never be as useful and valuable as Velma, what had Fred told him about calculating the angles of triangles, what had Daphne said about circles and what did those symbols mean and was that even a number-

“RAAAARRRRRR!”

“ZOINKS!” he screams as broken glass rains down around him and a glowing green monster with two heads and four legs swings down from the roof and crashes to the floor, looming over the shrieking students scrambling up from their chairs.

Correction, like, NOW I’m in the deepest crap of my life! What is it about me, man, I’m a monster magnet even in school!

Shaggy leaps up as the class sprint screaming from the exam room, stares frozen in panic at the hideous deformed beast lumbering menacingly towards him and the teacher shrieks and bolts as Shaggy runs for the gym storage rooms and yanks the doors open, grabs a huge bag of baseballs and tips them across the gym floor and the monster running at him tries to dodge and topples over a desk.

Shaggy doesn’t waste a second running out of the hall and down the corridor to the locker room, turns and the thing is still there behind him and he flings his locker door open in its face and hears a yelp that sounds a lot higher-pitched than the monster but he keeps going out onto the gym field, past the baseball hoops that he pushes back onto the thing and hears another shout but he’s nearly at the hockey shed and he swerves round to grab the net and tugs it out taut and the monster gives multiple shouts as it’s tangled in the net and flops to the ground, groaning.

Groaning a lot like-

“Uh… Freddie? Daphne?”

Shaggy tiptoes across to the monster, pulls its masks off to reveal his friends, out of breath and clutching their heads; there’s a shuffling behind him, and he turns round to Velma, holding a megaphone, head bowed.

“Guys?”

Velma gives a self-conscious smile, half-jogging over to Freddie and Daphne in the monster costume; Daphne’s nursing a bloodied nose, Fred a bruised forehead and cheek. “Man, Shag, you did a number on Freddie and Daph. Are you guys OK?”

“God a dissue?” Daphne mumbles.

Velma digs in her pocket and tugs out a handkerchief, holds it out; Daphne takes it with a mumble of thanks. “There you go. Freddie?”

“I’ll let you know when I stop seeing stars.” Fred struggles upright, holds a hand to his forehead. “Geez, Shag, that number of improvised traps? I’m proud.”

Shaggy manages a grin. “What’s the big idea, guys?”

Fred and Daphne exchange glances. “We, uh, we could see you starting to panic,” Fred says, wriggling his legs out of the costume and gently pulling Daphne free. “Velma thought of it, we still had the costume in Daph’s garage, we thought if you started to get freaked out we could, you know… drop in… and then the exam would be rescheduled.”

Shaggy glances round at Velma, crouched beside Daphne. “Like… you guys cooked this up and hung out on the roof of the gym for hours just in case I freaked out and flunked the exam?”

“You goddid,” comes from under the handkerchief.

Shaggy blinks, swallows hard. Looks round at them, Daphne with her bloody nose, Fred with a purple bruise blooming on his forehead, Velma with her megaphone and faint sunburn and the crumpled monster suit on the ground. “Guys… man. Like, thank you.”

“One favour, Shaggy.” Velma shoves Fred and Daphne out of the costume and starts scrumpling it up in her arms. “Can we borrow your locker? Mine’s full of spare Viking costumes and Scooby’s camped out in Fred’s… he was going to be our Viking horse if things didn’t work…”

-0-0-

He spends the evening going over his math textbook with Velma, a pizza and two jumbo bags of chips, laughing at Fred and Daphne icing each others’ injuries and attempting to repair the mangled swamp monster suit and of course he passes the test, when he knows the gang are camped out on the roof, ready to stage a Ghost Viking invasion of the exam hall should he panic again. They promised burgers at the Malt Shop after school, and no acute angle or quadratic equation is going to stop him from joining them.


End file.
